CAREER: DeepMatter: A Scalable and Programmable Embedded Deep Neural Network

深度神经网络(DNN)松散地模仿人脑，在准确解释感觉数据和识别模式方面取得了巨大的成功。然而，它们还没有被探索用于当前和未来的低功耗多传感器应用，如物联网(IoT)、可穿戴健康和移动智能设备。嵌入式开发的根本问题是当前的DNN模型非常复杂，这使得它们在硬件资源和功率预算有限的嵌入式系统中部署具有挑战性。该项目研究了用于DNN网络建模、稀疏和近似技术的新型和变革性方法，名为DeepMatter。该研究开发了新的体系结构来设计可编程的域特定多核平台，该平台实现了优化的网络，并提供了嵌入式DNN实现所需的性能、可扩展性、可编程性和能效要求。将设计一个应用程序接口(API)，使设计人员能够快速制作和部署下一代复杂和智能的应用程序。作为演示，DeepMatter将评估五个应用程序，包括用于癫痫和窘迫检测的多生理处理、多模式辅助装置、空气质量监测和基于视觉的态势感知。该研究项目的成功将导致小型且节能的可穿戴/移动计算设备，这些设备可以在传感器处对原始数据进行知识提取和分类，而不需要将大量原始数据发送到云中进行处理。这可能会给医疗、交通、生态、监控、公用事业等多个领域带来革命性的变化。将为研究界提供软件模型、硬件和工具，以制作不同应用程序的原型并对其进行评估。这项研究为开发嵌入式智能处理器的教育目标提供了一个多学科的平台，涉及初中生和教师以及本科生和研究生。

Deep neural networks (DNNs), modeled loosely after the human brain, have shown tremendous success to accurately interpret sensory data and recognize patterns. However, they have not been explored for current and future low power multi-sensor applications, such as Internet of Things (IoT), wearable health and mobile smart devices. The fundamental problem with embedded exploration is that current DNN models are very complex, making them challenging to deploy in embedded systems with limited hardware resources and power budgets. The project investigates novel and transformative methodologies for DNN network modeling, sparsification, and approximation techniques in software, termed DeepMatter. The research develops new architectures to design a programmable domain-specific many-core platform that implements the optimized network and provides performance, scalability, programmability, and power efficiency requirements necessary for embedded DNN implementations. An application program interface (API) will be designed to allow designers to rapidly prototype and deploy the next generation of sophisticated and intelligent applications. For demonstration, five applications including multi-physiological processing for seizure and distress detection, multi-modal assistive device, air quality monitoring and vision-based situational awareness will be evaluated on DeepMatter. The success of this research project will result in small and energy efficient wearable/mobile computing devices which can perform knowledge extraction and classification on raw data at the sensor without sending massive raw data to the cloud for processing. This can revolutionize several fields including healthcare, transportation, ecology, surveillance, public utilities. Software models, hardware and tools will be available for the research community to prototype and evaluate different applications. This research provides a multidisciplinary platform for educational objectives of developing embedded smart processors and involves middle and high school students and teachers as well as undergraduate and graduate students.